CRANBERRY, Pa. -- The other 31 NHL clubs play 82 games, too.
They all play on consecutive days and have three games in four day sometimes, as well.
So it's not as if the Penguins have gone through anything recently with which the rest of the league doesn't have to deal.
Nonetheless, it's safe to assume that few clubs will welcome the all-star break, which will begin after the Penguins face the Capitals Tuesday at 7:08 p.m. at PPG Paints Arena, more than the Penguins.
They've played 15 games in January, and completed a stretch of five in eight days with a 4-3 loss to the Kings Sunday.
"We recognize, as a coaching staff, the workload our team is going through," Mike Sullivan said after an optional practice Monday. "(Sunday), for example, was our seventh game in 11 days, so tomorrow will be eight in 13. It's a heavy workload. We're trying to manage that workload as best we can.
"Do I think a little bit of rest will help our team? For sure. I think we've relied on certain guys who are playing heavy minutes. To have an opportunity to get away from it for a couple of days and recharge the batteries doesn't hurt our group, that's for sure."
Kris Letang is easily the Penguins' most-used player, averaging 25 minutes, 44 seconds of ice time per game. His defense partner, Brian Dumoulin, is second at 22:09.
Sullivan gave players the choice between going on the ice Monday or at an optional skate Tuesday morning, and the most of them were present for the former. (They were, of course, free to participate in both.)
Six regulars who are believed to be healthy -- Evgeni Malkin, Marcus Pettersson, Mike Matheson, Jeff Carter, Chad Ruhwedel and Dumoulin -- were absent from the practice.
"There are some guys who play heavy minutes who prefer to have a day off today to give their bodies a chance to recover," Sullivan said. "There are other guys who maybe play less minutes who need the repetitions on the ice in practice. There are some guys who play heavy minutes who don't like to skate on the morning of a game. They like to have that time off, so they chose to skate today."
Although it doesn't seem like a reach to suggest that there's a connection between their draining schedule in recent weeks and the slippage in the Penguins' attention to detail and crispness of execution, neither Sullivan nor Letang drew a direct one.
Letang suggested that the fatigue inherent in playing so often has been compounded for the Penguins of late by the inability to get or maintain a lead. In the past three games, all losses, they have been ahead just once, a one-goal edge that lasted less than 10 minutes during what became a 2-1 overtime loss to Seattle.
"Maybe lately, we've been chasing the game a little bit more," he said. "So you have to exert yourself, either to come back in the game or when you go back-and-forth all the time, you exert yourself. You're pushing through adversity. You're pushing through fatigue.
"We've been playing a lot of West Coast teams, bigger teams. Maybe we didn't manage the game the right way, which put us in trouble and we had to probably put more energy on the ice."
Under the original schedule, the Penguins were supposed to head into a lengthy Olympic break after facing the Capitals. That plan was scrapped when COVID-19 forced about 100 games to be postponed, ultimately prompting the league to pull out of the Olympics.
The schedule then was revised for most teams and, after a standard all-star break, play will resume next Tuesday.
"It's a tough calendar, especially when the (schedule) change," Letang said. "We were supposed to have a longer break."
MORE FROM PRACTICE
• Sullivan said forward Danton Heinen, a late scratch Sunday, is "still day-to-day at this point" with an undisclosed injury.
• Letang, on the need to elevate the Penguins' forecheck to the level it reached previously: "That's the way we're built. We're built for speed and we have a lot of guys who are really good at holding onto the puck down low. so that's the way to do it. You get on the forecheck, you get the puck back and now you can go to work."
• Injured forward Drew O'Connor skated by himself for about a a half-hour before the practice. He was wearing a track suit, not full equipment and did not do anything particularly demanding.
• Sullivan, on how he and his staff decide things such as when to make a practice optional, or to cancel lit: "We try to use some of the metrics that our sports-science department collects to try to make the best decisions for the hockey team. For example, with respect to workload, one of the metrics we rely on is heart rate-variability. We track it on a consistent basis, and it's a measure of potential fatigue. It could be an indication of over-training. But at the end of the day, I think coaches mostly rely on their own intuition and their 'coach's instinct' to make the best decision. But some of the science just provides affirmation that when your instinct is or what your intuition is is correct."
• Because the practice was optional, there were no personnel combinations of consequence.
